THE INQUIRY INTO THE LABOUR UNREST. T HE Government will be
right not to make their inquiry into the labour unrest, and what we may term the strike problem, too diffuse in its nature, but at the same time we hope that they will not shut out any matters of real importance ; will not, that is, yield. to the temptation not to touch certain questions because they are too difficult or too thorny and likely to raise problems which it may be disagreeable for them, or indeed. for both parties, to enter upon. We have got to a point where the only safe and the only wise thing to do is to face the whole question fairly and squarely. More par- ticularly is the Spectator concerned that the case for free exchange and free contract shall have proper consideration, and that it shall not be assumed. that this policy is a belated anachronism, too much out of fashion and out of favour to be troubled about. That there is a real danger of the free exchange point of view being overlooked is obvious. The Socialists and the so-called Social Reformers on the one side and the Protectionists and the Tariff Reformers on the other are only too likely to cold-shoulder the opinions of those who still believe that men can protect themselves better than the State can protect them; that State action and State interference are sure to diminish human energy, and so to encourage economic waste ; that such waste must depress the condition of the poor ; that the old objections to mortmain hold good ; and that private property is not a sort of necessary evil which must always be apologized for, but the greatest of blessings to mankmd and the greatest support to human liberty and moral progress. A fair opportunity ought to be given to the friends of free exchange, and there should be no assumption that free exchange has been tried and found wanting. True, free exchange has never been tried. The ship of State is still loaded down almost to the water line with the dangerous debris of the Socialism of the middle ages and with the commercial and fiscal fallacies of the eighteenth century. No one has a right to say that the policy for which we stand. has been exploded and must make way for experi- ments in other directions. It is not for us to attempt to draw the reference of the inquiry, but we desire to say something as to several of the matters which ought, we hold, to come within its scope. In the first place there is the problem of the Trade Disputes Act and the question of how far the immunity given to combinations, whether of masters or men—the privilege to stand outside, or rather above, the ordinary law—is wise. We note that many supporters of that Act say, and no doubt to some extent say truly, that even if there had been no Trade Disputes Act the coal strike would have taken place. Those, however, who argue thus miss the point. The objection to freeing combinations such as trade unions or federations of unions from responsibility in regard to their acts is that such bodies are by their Anemia prevented. from entering into binding agreements, and that treaties of peace or other voluntary under- takings cannot effectively be made by them. Neither the word of a trade organization nor its bond is of any value because that word though pledged cannot be enforced. Therefore the employer- is always dealing, as it were, with a minor or a lunatic or other person incapable of making a contract. The result is not good but bad for labour. Every one knows that a man or a firm whose word. or bond for some reason cannot be relied on is at a huge disadvan- tage in commercial transactions. He has to pay for this disability at every turn. Again and again opportunities are lost to the person who cannot make a binding contract. On the other hand, the man, or the association of men, whose word once passed is always carried. out is at a corresponding advantage. It is a commonplace among traders to the East that the Chinaman, though in some ways a difficult person to trade with, gains immensely from the fact that, when once he has said, " Can do," nothing will shake his contract. Thera is no need. for insuring in any shape or form against failure on his part to make good his pledge. No one, of course, wants to put the trade unions in fetters or to compel them to make bargains which they do not want to make ; but assuredly it is not in the interests of the worker that those who represent him should not act with responsibility, and that the organizations which are in possession of large funds and a complicated. and efficient machinery should not be made responsible for their actions like other social organizations. We would inquire, then, whether the inability of those who make agreements with unions, or federations of unions, to enforce those agreements is not in reality an. injury to the workers and a source of trouble and confusion rather than of strength.
Next, we sincerely trust that the question of the pressure of rates and taxes and of inflated expenditure generally upon the poor will be considered. We believe an inquiry must show that a great deal of the expenditure, national and municipal, intended to help the working man does him cruel injustice, and that action intended. to raise him often pushes him down and prevents his achieving his own industrial and social salvation. The State is always sweeping into its coffers money which, if left to fructify in the pockets of the taxpayers, would set thousands of men at work and cause that. brisk demand for labour through the employment of capital which is labour's essential desideratum. We do not, of course, say that money raised by taxation is money lost, but wo do say that to a very great extent it is like the talent laid up in the napkin and becomes sterile where it might have been fructuous. Connected with this is the problem of the depreciation of gold. This will clearly have to be touched upon by the inquiry, but we hope that in doing this the Commission, or committee, or whatever body is employed. to do the work will make clear to the public mind the distinction between gold as currency and gold as the measure of value. Too often in this discussion the- dual function of gold is forgotten, and we are treated to statements as to the vast expansion of credit and of paper capital, just as if those who believe in the depreciation of gold imagine that gold is the only form of wealth. Not only has the total wealth of the world been enormously increased by the improved mechanism of credit, but also the demand for gold as currency has been diminished. by the use of cheques and clearing houses. But when all this is said and done the fact remains that prices, whatever they are, are now almost universally measured in gold, and that if the amount of gold. in the world is rapidly increased prices measured. in gold will go up wherever those prices are fluid. In the case, however, of permanent contracts to pay so many grains or ounces of gold as the price of a particular thing, the payer of the fixed price gains and the receiver loses, with a very obvious dis- advantage to the receiver. The extreme case is the man who has lent his money to the State in perpetuity for an annual payment of so many ounces of gold, for he can never get off his bargain. But even the man who is paid a weekly wage, and is theoretically free to raise his prices, may find the process of adjustment difficult. In noting this, how- ever, it must not be supposed that we accept the assertion that gold has in fact depreciated. What we want to know is whether it has, and, if so, by how much.
We may assume that the subjects of piece-work and profit-sharing will be dealt with in detail ; nor again is the housing problem, which is of such vast importance to the contentment and welfare of the working man, likely to be forgotten, though here we should like to point out that no talking about the housing problem will do half as much good as some small invention or device in the direction of cheapening construction. Another problem which it is clear must be considered is the Eight Hours' Act for Miners and what has been its actual result. Inquiry also is bound to be made into the experiences of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, and also of foreign countries, in the matter of compulsory arbitration. Another point which is sure to arrest attention, and one on which we must say a word, is the question of special trades—whether, that is, there are trades which the Legislature can rightly put under special obligations while leaving the ordinary industries of the country to manage their own affairs. In our opinion there is only one special trade in this sense, and that is transport by rail or by sea. If there is not free circula- tion in the body politic it must fall a victim to something in the nature of social apoplexy. In our opinion, however, the coal trade is not a special trade. The strike has proved this. But even if it had not done so we should say the same, because the dangers of a coal strike leading to universal cessation of labour, such as must take place in the case of the paralysis of all forms of transport, can be met by the storage of coal and by the fact that coal is by no means the only source of power. It is indeed the possibility of storing coal that prevented the strike from ruining the country. All that is necessary to save us from danger in the future is a more complete and more perfect system of storage. If all the essential industries of the country kept a couple of months' supply of coal in hand, the country could never again be held up because the minors and the mine owners were at loggerheads.
We have kept to the last a matter upon which we sincerely trust the inquiry will throw light. As we have so often had occasion to say in these columns, we are no enemies of trade unions, and are indeed inclined to think that trade unions are a necessary part of machinery for insuring that the workers shall obtain as readily as possible improvements in wages, hours of labour, &c., which the economic conditions allow. We are, however, sometimes inclined to doubt whether this opinion can be a true one in view of some of the facts of labour. It is a common- place of industrial statistics that the industries in which there are no unions and in which strikes never take place are the industries in which the increase of wages has been most marked. Take, for example, the labour of female domestic servants. There are no cooks', no housemaids', and no nurses' unions, and the workers in question have never struck, and yet in the last fifty years their remuneration has increased at a greater rate than that of almost any other trade. It is not merely that their nominal wages aro higher. They have also obtained what is a great increase in pay in the shape of much better treatment in the matter of their rooms, of their furniture, and also of their food. The money expended on keeping a servant in an ordinary middle-class house where, say, three servants are kept is greatly in excess of what it was fifty years ago. It has been ingeniously argued that this increase in the price of female domestic labour is in no sense due, as belated political economists might suppose, to the general prosperity of the country and to the very great demand for domestic servants caused by such prosperity— in other words to the fact that cooks and housemaids do so much better because there are many more familiesin a position to keep cooks and housemaids, i.e., that the price of their labour has gone up in response to a greatly increased demand. This, we are told, is only the appearance. The real cause, it is alleged, is a shortage in the supply of cooks and housemaids owing to the detestation of domestic labour felt by the class from which the servants are drawn. We do not believe a word of it.
Domestic service was, in a sense, always disliked by women, who naturally—and rightly—would have preferred to marry and have households of their own in which they would not be under the restraint of any employer. Speaking generally, however, those families from which women servants, and also men servants, were drawn in the past supply them at present. The wife of the careful artisan and careful small farmer is just as anxious to get her daughter a good place as ever she was, for she realizes how much bettor off that daughter is likely to be in the matter of health and the power to save money than is the factory worker, who is only too likely, if she becomes a skilled wage earner, to be married by some man who desires to live in idleness upon her toil. We must not, however, enter too much in detail into these matters. But we do sincerely hope that the question how far unions and strikes and the threats of strikes have been the cause of increased wages will be illuminated. For fear, however, of misunderstanding, let us say at once that we by no means suggest that even if it can be shown that trade unions have not been able to raise wages, or rather that the rise in wages would have come just as well without them, it follows that unions should be looked at askance by the working man as worthless. Again, even if it could be proved—which we think is quite possible—that if the money spent in subscriptions to trade unions had been saved by the individual workers it would now be at their disposal in savings bank deposits, we should not say that the unions were useless. In the first place they have undoubtedly added to the dignity of labour and to the labourer's self- respect, and that, we fully admit, is a matter of im- portance. To put it in another way, the trade union, even if not actually useful, may bo a very proper luxury for workmen to indulge in. Finally, we fully recognize that unions, though they have often caused useless strikes, and though they have some- times abused the special privileges which Parliament so fool- ishly endowed them with, have also often greatly steadied labour and greatly facilitated its organization. Indeed, we can imagine the employer saving of the unions what the man says to the Gods in the " Digit of the Moon "- though women are the source of all trouble he cannot get on without them. In many skilled industries the employers find the trade-union officials most useful intermediaries between them and those they employ.
Previous page
